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REVIEWS |
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“ The OFFICIAL reason for the death of CM Hardt’s
grandfather was a haemorrhage of the brain and lung. What
the death certificate failed to mention was that a more pertinent
explanation for the ending of his life at age of 35 was that
he had been shot 10 times…...[Hardt] bought a video
camera, sub-let her flat on the Upper West Side and headed
for El Valle. A brash young New Yorker armed with a video
camera and determined to find out what had happened in a part
of Spain’s hidden past ruffled many feathers. “
The Guardian
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“…Thus, we are shown the local dream concoction
of pig’s knuckles and ears…, evidence that Hardt’s
grandfather was shot for harboring guerrillas; and much Latin
passion, as the family flail furiously at her historical “stirring’,
and at that thing she keeps pointing at them.”
The Sunday Times - UK
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Travels with My Camera (C4) sends New York photographer CM
Hardt back to her roots in north-western Spain, digging around
for the truth about what happened to her grandfather, shot
by Franco's police in the late Forties. He was, it transpires,
an underground guerilla fighter who had refused to accept
El Caudillo's victory in the Spanish Civil War. "I knew
nothing then, and I know nothing now," says her great-grandmother.
She is a sprightly 97 year-old, so maybe she does know something
after all.
The Independent
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Whether Spain ever sees [Death in El Valle]
is another question. “ I want it to be shown, but it
is a very contentious topic there. The few Spanish people
who have seen it get very disturbed by it. The younger people
feel very much as I do: why this silence? Why this amnesia?
But older people, even those who fought on the Republican
side, think this is very painful and best forgotten.”
The Guardian
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" Closer to home is C.M. Hardt’s Death
in El Valle. A Spanish American photojournalist
(whose work often appears in the Voice), Hardt leaves New
York City to visit family in the Spanish countryside. She
hopes to make a film about the Franco era murder of her grandfather
but discovers instead the near impenetrability of politics
played out on a family scale. Secrets are held by one generation
from the next and neighbors deny memory of the past before
cheerfully accusing other towns-people of murder and betrayal."
The Village Voice
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In trying to chronicle the past, Hardt creates part socio-political
study, part murder mystery. ……but no one in El
Valle today wants to think about it any more, so Hardt must
assume the unpopular on-camera role of a walking, talking
conscience.
VOX
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[CM
Hardt] has crafted a project …that bravely attempts
to tear down walls her own family erected as a way of forgetting
a painful episode that took place five decades ago….
VOX |
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